Jane McGonigal; The expertise of computer gamers

I find this one of the most profound TED talks. McGonigal basically makes the case that when computer gamers play computer games they are a) more optimistic b) persevere more, c) more motivated, etc than in real life. While she talks about harnessing this untapped talent, I am more interested in the educational implications of computer gaming. What are the parameters of computer games that allow and stimulate this super-human concentration and dedication? She has some good ideas on this. And really, this is what I'm interested in. I would like for my physics students to be as dedicated and productive in their physics class as they are in their computer games.

Ideas worth spreading

We love TED talks. After using YouTube as the online resource to learn for a few years, now we have switch to go to TED to get inspiring ideas.
The fundamental idea of TED is to make "ideas worth spreading" free and available to everyone. So all the talks on TED are supposed to be good. But there are 800+ talks on TED.com. Sometimes we found ourselves getting lost trying to find good talks that we had run into some time back.
So here we are setting up a blog to blog about the TED talks that inspire us. Talks that gives us new ideas, that excited us, and that make us want to share with them other people. After reading this post, if you see a TED talk, or any talk, you think we might be interested in, feel free to send us a note. We will check the talk out as well.